What’s The Tea?: University of VA Student, Otto Warmbier is Being Released From North Korea

According to the Washington Post, University of Virginia student Otto Warmbier, 22, who has been detained in North Korea for 17 months, has been medically evacuated from the country in a coma, his parents told The Washington Post Tuesday.

“Our son is coming home,” Fred Warmbier told The Post Tuesday morning after Otto had been evacuated from North Korea. “At the moment, we’re just treating this like he’s been in an accident. We get to see our son Otto tonight.”

Warmbier was on a New Year’s Eve tour in North Korea, en route to Hong Kong, where he was to do a January study-abroad trip.But on his final night in Pyongyang — New Year’s Eve — Warmbier appears to have gone to a staff-only floor of his hotel and attempted to take down a large propaganda sign lauding the regime.

He was charged with “hostile acts against the state,” and after an hour-long trial in March, 2016, sentenced to 15 years in prison with hard labor.

The Warmbiers were told that he had come down with a case of botulism soon after his trial – which lasted only one hour – and had been given a sleeping pill, from which he never woke up.